The idea of a pre-Christmas rush on the high street – retailers rushing out new products or slashing the prices on old ones in a bid to secure a prime spot under the Christmas trees – is well established.

On digital marketplaces like the App Store, such festive frolics are a relatively new factor.

Just like in physical stores, however, the game is all about positioning: planting your product directly in the line of sight of the consumer, this time as they delve into the App Store for the first time on the 24 or 25 December.

Doing so is a case of either updating your app with a bevy of new features – and hopefully picking up some promo as a result – or slashing its price so it's placed highly in the charts just in time for the big day.

Given the deadline for getting such updates before the App Store's traditional Christmas freeze has now passed, we decided to talk shop with some of the studios who've undertaken such exercises in the past, as well as those who - for one reason or another - give all such yuletide yomps a miss.

A matter of time

For those who engage in an update or two in time for Christmas, timing naturally is everything.

"One of the big challenges is not knowing how long it will take for Apple to approve your app, making it tricky to coordinate a launch," says Neon Play co-founder and CEO Oli Christie.

"We typically allow seven to 10 days for app approval, but it can take more of less. We thought that in the run up to Christmas there would be big delays at Apple due to the late splurge. However, approvals have been very quick – under five days."

Rodeo Games co-founder Ben Murch agrees. "The biggest problem with App Store submission is not knowing how long approval will take.

"I've learned you can hold back an app once it's been approved, so they you can finalise launch details. You can even update an app that's been held for release – a process that's a lot quicker than the approval one."

Get with the program

In terms of the Christmas freeze itself, however, ustwo's self-appointed CHIEF WONKA mills™ believes studios have no excuse for not making the cut.

"It has been very openly marketed to developers that the freeze would happen around the 22nd and we had this in mind," he says.

There are other problems that can trip studios up as they rush to get their app out or updated in time.

"The only issue we ever have is when we have critical bugs that we somehow missed in QA and need to get the update out as soon as possible in order to stop the chances of users rallying against us in the street. In many ways it would be good to have two streams of app submissions."

Interestingly, mills advises those looking to avoid such trials and tribulations to "not make an app in the first place."

He concludes, "I find this really helps your bank balance and reduces the chance all your hair will fall out."

Honest approach

Avoiding pushing out an update with bugs is more of an issue at Christmas as it is the rest of the year, as consumers may well decide to skip your app entirely – and any others you go on to release – if their first experience is a bad one.

As 36peas founder Gareth Jenkins maintains, however, there are ways of working the system.

"I'd recommend being realistic with time tracking and bug or feature estimation – FogBugz and its evidence-based scheduling is an excellent tool for this," he claims.

"We had some issues with content rejections a few years back. Best way around that is, if you've got content you're not 100 percent on, that you think might get rejected, submit a version 1 without that content and then put it in via an update.

"This doesn't necessarily increase the chance of it getting approved – it just means your entire app isn't held up because of a content issue you could likely work around."

Covering all bases

Hogrocket's Ben Ward, however, believes it's better to be honest from the get go.

"With Hogrocket's first submission, Tiny Invaders, we took a couple of preventative measures during submission," he told us.

"We took screenshots of areas we thought might be a red flag for Apple and put them front and centre in our submission metadata."

The studio's co-founder claims Hogrocket made it clear to Apple it would be willing to pull any characters that might have been a problem with others on stand by, serving up replacement artwork as evidence.

"Fortunately Apple didn't have any beef with it, but I'm sure it appreciated our frank and honest approach."

Selling out

If cutting the price of your title, rather than updating it, is your chosen strategy, the view of the developers we surveyed is relatively mixed.

2010 saw EA - almongst others - cut its prices en masse, resulting in an almost clean sweep of the top spots on the App Store's charts. While the rise of freemium means dropping the price of an app to 99c/69p isn't as attractive to consumers as it might have been previously, most indies are unsure as to whether taking on the big boys is a wise move.

"As an indie, I wouldn't be doing battle on the paid App Store charts this Christmas, or any time," claims Mobile Pie creative director Will Luton.

"Undercut the bottom and go free," he adds simply.

"I'm always happy to try an take on the big boys, but with only one game out, the potential for cross promotion there is zero," says Spilt Milk Studios MD Andrew John Smith.

"EA and the like will leverage that to clog up the top of the charts no doubt. They will also have great connections and people whose sole job is to secure their games' visibility on the store. But, you never know – it never hurts to try."

Controversially, perhaps, mills™ believes EA's moves over the Christmas period are tantamount to genius.

"Granted, it's always a little sickening for the little guys like us on the side who see even less chances of success around this time of year, but this is business and business is never easy. If I were EA, I'd be doing it."

The ustwo man is less sure just what value sales can have for smaller studios as a result.

"Personally, I think price drops when used as marketing efforts are a fallacy. The average developer won't see any change as it has no way of communicating the drop apart from through pointless spam bots that tweet any inane app change."

Last Christmas

Indeed, Will Luton believes as competitive has the App Store been in 2011, the 'race to the bottom' endured in 2010 has "already happened".

"This Christmas isn't going to be like last year with the big 99c sale from EA," he adds.

"20 of the top 25 games are at 99c, and the only stuff that can sit in higher tiers in the chart is the ultra premium branded stuff. When you pull the floor out of their price, they leap, but it's at a cost."

Neon Play's Oli Christie believes such moves are part and parcel of a competitive and healthy marketplace.

"People do 'game' the App Store, but you don't 'game it', then someone else will instead, and you'll lose out," he adds.

Supermono founder Tak Fung disagrees, however, questioning the value in going toe-to-toe with the platform's bigger players, whether in terms of a new release, or discounting those already on offer.

"I find it unwise to release anything new over Christmas these days," he contests. "[Price drops] used to have an effect, but I don't think it offers a good effort to reward ratio when you're taking on the big giants using this tactic."

Address your niche

Nonetheless, despite rarely being the quick fix it was pitched as, Christmas price drops still have their backers.

"Even if a game doesn't chart as high, getting it visible near Christmas time can increase sales up to three times normal daily sales," claims Crescent Moon creative director Josh Presseisen.

"Price drops and sales are really important in the holiday season," adds Rodeo's Ben Murch.

"Just over Thanksgiving weekend we saw about five to six times the sales of Hunters. Taking EA, Gameloft, etc on head to head would be crazy, so you have to come at the situation from a different angle.

"Our main market is the turn-based strategy crowd. The bigger players don't have a lot of presence there, so we can focus on being the interesting alternative."
Thanks to all the interviewees for their time.